Not every photo find yields a fascinating, or even a slightly interesting, story. This isn’t to say that the sitters led uneventful lives. It just means that I’ve not had the pleasure of discovering their full history. This is the first in my Snap Shot series, which will showcase those photos from my collection.

Look at the table detail in this carte de visite. The sitter is Mary Sophia (nee Germann) Schmid. The photographer was J.F. Rank & Co. in Van Wert, Ohio. Sophia was born in 1855 and shares my birth date of March 5.